January 18, 2024
Becoming a Legacy Leader:
A 10-Step Manager’s Guide to Unlocking Limitless Opportunities
Zana Kenjar
Aviva Publishing (2023)
Paperback ISBN:978-1-63618-284-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63618-285-8
New Book Offers Ten Steps to Leadership and All Its Possibilities
Becoming a Legacy Leader: A 10-Step Manager’s Guide to Unlocking Limitless Opportunities is a dynamic new book by Zana Kenjar, who has spent years leading teams in various roles. The book devotes a chapter to each of the ten steps, which include Building Your Champion Mindset, Developing a Risk-Management Culture, and Becoming a Profit-Driven Leader. At the heart of the book is how to cultivate a strong relationship with those you lead by getting to know your team members individually and inspiring them to do more than they may believe they can. A bonus chapter is targeted to immigrants, helping them to adapt to working in the United States and providing tools to leaders for how to help them in the process. Kenjar is herself an immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager and is now a proud US citizen.
Kenjar begins by addressing how many people want to be promoted to their first or next leadership position but often wait years and feel stuck because they don’t actively try to help themselves. Kenjar shares her own story of being overlooked for a leadership position only to learn from the leader who took the position how she could best help herself advance in her career. Ultimately, Kenjar learned that moving up the ladder doesn’t have to be so challenging. She now wants to share what she learned, which is all about uncovering your potential so you can become the leader you always wanted to be. She has now been in leadership roles since 1996, including seventeen years in the banking industry. She has even been recognized as in the top 2 percent of the country’s highest-performing managers. Today, Kenjar is a self-employed consultant, author, and speaker who teaches others to accomplish what she has achieved.
As Kenjar walks readers through the steps to becoming leaders, she shares inspiring quotes, practical advice, and thought-provoking exercises that allow them to apply what they have learned in each chapter. Most importantly, she focuses on the importance of not letting fear stop us, being willing to change, and not letting negative thoughts overpower us. Perhaps most inspiring of all are her personal stories about people who worked for her whom she was delighted to see advance in their careers. Kenjar seriously cares about her team members, as evidenced by her repeated emphasis on the need to celebrate others’ achievements.
The book’s chapters are largely arranged into lists or steps related to how to achieve the goal of the chapter’s topic. For example, when discussing the importance of communication, Kenjar reminds us that we must learn how to speak effectively to our team, our manager, our peers, our business partners, our family, and ourselves. She discusses in detail each of the following tips for how to be an effective communicator: speak with sincerity and humility; lead with empathy, influence, and patience in your voice; do not use nonverbal communication like slamming a door that says the opposite of what is helpful; and respect your body language by making sure it says to your team members, “I am here, happy and willing to teach you and help you every day!”
Kenjar offers a lot of practical advice for leading teams through change. She knows the boss has to be the change leader. They cannot be negative about the change or try to blame those higher-up for it. They must be positive about it, explaining how it will be a good thing for everyone involved. Communication is also important during change, even if you sound like a broken record, to ensure everyone knows what to expect and is clear on how to implement the change successfully.
One chapter discusses the importance of becoming a customer experience expert. Kenjar teaches her team members how to greet customers properly, making them feel special. She recommends having coffee chats with customers. She suggests making a list of your top twenty clients and learning their stories so you know what they need and can develop a lasting relationship with them. In the end, it is clear Kenjar cares about her customers as much as she does about her team members.
Everything in Becoming a Legacy Leader is valuable and worth discussing, but what really jumped out at me was Kenjar’s appreciation for what she has had the opportunity to achieve by immigrating to the United States. Too many of us born in this country take things for granted and focus on the negative rather than the wonderful freedom and opportunities we have here. Kenjar’s positivity is refreshing. She states:
“I love the United States of America. It’s the best country in the world because it is full of opportunities, and I will continue to create opportunities for myself, my family, and my employees until my dying day. Get to know your team, create endless opportunities, help them find options, and there will be no limit to who and what you and your people can become.”
Being an immigrant, Kenjar focuses a lot on the importance and value of diversity. She has led many diverse teams with different dynamics and of different sizes and realizes everyone has different talents to offer and can be of value. She encourages leaders to take diversity training and educate themselves on the countries and cultures their team members are from. This activity will help team members feel cared about and help leaders understand where their team members are coming from.
Becoming a Legacy Leader is a book that will benefit anyone who reads it. It offers both an inside perspective on leadership and a refreshing voice that will inspire its readers to become inspired leaders.
For more information about Zana Kenjar and Becoming a Legacy Leader, visit www.BecomingALegacyLeader.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
